This thesis will attempt both to explore the phenomenon of dietary restriction within the
context of Graeco-Roman antiquity and to prove that it existed in an intimate and causal
relationship with the construction, maintenance and perception of cultural, political and
religious identity. It will be the contention of this thesis that in the same way as social
and ethnic groups may seek to utilise indigenous cuisines and particular modes of food
consumption as social markers to define and negotiate notions of identity and as a way
of asserting these notions within the context of a period of social transition, population
migration and cultural hybridisation, so too may forms of dietary restriction serve an
analogous function. The thesis will examine this phenomenon primarily through the
literature of the Classical, Hellenistic and Roman periods. Its geographical background
will be the Italian peninsula and the Greek speaking East. Chronologically the scope of
the study will focus predominantly upon the first and second centuries A.D, a period
rich in both cultural interaction and tension, but, owing to the particular cultural and
philosophical strands that were current during this period, and the specific concerns of
authors writing during this period, the material under contemplation will in fact range
from the Homeric texts to Porphyry. These tensions throw into sharp relief the problems
of defining the nature and limits of group and individual identity within a sprawling and
heterogeneous ethnic melting pot. The thesis will examine such phenomena as
vegetarianism, the taboos and anxieties surrounding the bean, the ambiguous status of
fish, the dietary legislation of the Jewish people and the restrictions that were placed
upon the consumption of alcohol. These particular instances of dietary restriction serve
as examples of dietary flash points, when differing dietary ideologies act as potent
illustrations of the simmering undercurrents of ethnic, racial and cultural tensions that
existed in the ancient world
